


you look like my heart but different somehow

by chrysalizzm



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-02 22:15:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10953807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chrysalizzm/pseuds/chrysalizzm
Summary: Hinoe is not a fool. And neither is Natsume Reiko.(Or: Hinoe, like a fool, loves Natsume Reiko.)





	you look like my heart but different somehow

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first story on both AO3 and for the NatsuYuu fandom. Please criticize and leave pointers accordingly, and enjoy!

When Reiko looks up, the moon is being blocked out by a long, pale face.

"Reiko," says Hinoe, and she sits carefully on the forest floor, carpeted by dead leaves. It's the end of summer but not quite autumn, and the trees are dying but not quite dead. The world is gold and red and orange all around them, and Hinoe feels oddly peaceful, here in the dark, sitting beside the pretty human girl with a book full of youkai names, illuminated not by the moon or stars but by sheer force of will.

Reiko smiles that unassuming smile, that blank, blank, blank smile that is nothing but an empty mirror, and says, "Hinoe."

Hinoe gingerly tests the temperature of the lake's waters with her sandaled toe. "You always come back here, girl. What are you waiting for?" Reiko was sitting at the edge of this lake for the past couple of nights, and before then she had waited here for weeks on end sometimes, staring into the dappled water like it was the answer to every question she had ever asked. Hinoe had only begun to join her on her moonlit vigils four months ago when the girl befriended her, though Hinoe likes to think it was a little more than befriending. 

After all, Reiko hardly makes friends of youkai. 

Reiko rests her chin on her knees, wearing that same school uniform she's always wearing. Her pale eyes remain fixated on the lake as she says, "Nothing. I'm waiting for nothing."

A lie, a lie, a lie, and Hinoe's lips thin as she stares at Reiko who stares into the lake, her white hand delicately folded around a long pipe. The sharp smell of tobacco wafts from it, buried deep into Hinoe's clothing and hair, but Reiko doesn't seem to mind. She's so untouchable, this human child, when she should be like the effervescent human girls Hinoe sees, with fleeting lives and unimportant interests. No, Natsume Reiko is different, a black hole, with nothing inside.

Perhaps she is empty. A container, as it were, for human emotion and human thoughts, but, for all intents and purposes, empty.

"Or maybe I am waiting for something," says Reiko suddenly, stretching back like a cat, and Hinoe can't help that her eyes go to the few inches of bare skin that show on Reiko's stomach when her shirt rides up. Pale, like the rest of her. She's thin, not carrying as much weight as other, healthier humans Hinoe has seen. 

She's beautiful, but Hinoe's not going to say that out loud.

As if she read Hinoe's mind, Reiko smirks a little at her, an ironic slant to her mouth as she grins at the youkai, and Hinoe thinks faintly that she should probably invest in face masks. 

"I'm waiting for someone," says Reiko, and her pale eyes turn again to the water. Hinoe's arched eyebrows bend, and she seethes silently—of course Reiko would never love her, she's a youkai, damn it, not a human, nothing tangible that Reiko could enjoy—but Reiko continues, "I'm waiting for someone to save me."

She doesn't say it with any particular inflections in tone. Her statement is so bald that she might as well have been pointing out that the lake contained fish. And yet it was so important, what Reiko was saying to Hinoe, and Hinoe couldn't help a small thrill in her stomach, the shy little smile that touched her mouth—Reiko was opening her thoughts to her, she was sharing a deep secret with her.

Reiko twists in her position so that she's half facing Hinoe and half facing the lake, and Hinoe suddenly feels as though she can't breathe, staring at Reiko full in the face, at her pale eyes and hooked nose, thin upper lip and full lower one, a pale face pockmarked with acne and faint bruises. An imperfect face but a beautiful one to Hinoe, who has, like a fool, been hopelessly, desperately in love with a human girl.

Reiko's hand reaches forward. One of her fingers, Hinoe thinks vaguely, is crooked at the joint, because someone broke it three weeks ago, pushing her onto the rocky road and laughing when Reiko grimaced, her hands wrapped together, blood spilling from a split lip. Reiko's crooked hand lands on Hinoe's cheek, traces it, and Hinoe's breath flutters from her in one deep sigh.

"Did I save you?" she asks, her white forehead touching Reiko's flawed one.

"No, not really," laughs Reiko, snorting tobacco smoke from her wrinkled nose, and kisses Hinoe.

\- - -

Almost a hundred years later, or just a decade or two less, Madara will gaze with sympathy at a disheveled, white-skinned youkai, remembering blue hair tumbling down a hillside and a white hand twined with a flesh one and Hinoe kissing Natsume Reiko's throat, loving her, cherishing her, even though they were both sensible enough to know that it was a foolish game to play.

But then, love makes you think you're invincible, Madara thinks, staring at Hinoe staring at this beautiful boy, the exact reflection of Reiko, but only to an extent, only shallowly, because deep inside this boy is not Reiko.

He is not Reiko and there will never be another Reiko for Hinoe, but all the same Hinoe smiles and takes the boy's hands in her white ones.

"Well, boy. What is your name?"


End file.
